The girl wondered: was he an idiot, or what they called a poet? Anyhow, she had a bun in her pocket, which she had meant to eat at five o’clock, and she offered him that.
“But what will you do yourself? Have you another?” asked Clare, unready to take it.
“No,” she answered; “why shouldn’t I go without as well as you?”
“Because it won’t make things any better. There will be just as much hunger. It’s only shifting it from me to you. That will leave it all the same!”
“No, not the same,” she returned. “I’ve had a good dinner—as much as I could eat; and you’ve had none!”
Clare was persuaded, and ate the girl’s bun with much satisfaction and gratitude.
When he had his wages in the evening, he spent them as before—a penny for the baby, and fivepence at Mr. Ball’s for Tommy, Abdiel, and himself.
Observing that he came daily, and spent all he earned, except one penny, on bread; seeing also that the boy’s cheeks, though plainly he was in good health, were very thin, Mr. Ball wondered a little: a boy ought to look better than that on five pennyworth of bread a day!
They were a curious family—Clare, and Tommy, and the baby, and Abdiel. But the only thing sad about it was, that Clare, who was the head and the heart of it, and provided for all, should be upheld by no human sympathy, no human gratitude; that he should be so high above his companions that, though he never thought he was lonely, he could not help feeling lonely. Not once did he wish himself rid of any single member of his adopted family. It was living on his very body; he was growing a little thinner every day; if things had gone on so, he must before long have fallen ill; but he never thought of himself at all, body or soul.
He had no human sympathy or gratitude, I say, but he had both sympathy and gratitude from Abdiel. The dog never failed to understand what Clare wished and expected him to understand. In Clare’s absence he took on himself the protection of the establishment, and was Tommy’s superior.